“Well, you ce’tainly do equal anything,” said his wife.  She lay still awhile, and then she roused herself with indignant energy.  “Well, then, I can tell you what, Albe’t Landa:  yon can go right straight and take back everything you said.  I don’t want the child, and I won’t have her.  I’ve got care enough to worry me now, I should think; and we should have her whole family on our hands, with that shiftless father of hers, and the whole pack of her brothas and sistas.  What made you think I wanted you to do such a thing?”

“You wanted me to do it last night.  Wouldn’t ha’dly let me go to bed.”

“Yes!  And how many times have I told you nova to go off and do a thing that I wanted you to, unless you asked me if I did?  Must I die befo’e you can find out that there is such a thing as talkin’, and such anotha thing as doin’?  You wouldn’t get yourself into half as many scrapes if you talked more and done less, in this wo’ld.”  Lander rose.

“Wait!  Hold on!  What are you going to say to the pooa thing?  She’ll be so disappointed!”

“I don’t know as I shall need to say anything myself,” answered the little man, at his dryest.  “Leave that to you.”

“Well, I can tell you,” returned his wife, “I’m not goin’ nea’ them again; and if you think—­What did you ask the woman, anyway?”

“I asked her,” he said, “if she wanted to let the gul come and see you about some sewing you had to have done, and she said she did.”

“And you didn’t speak about havin’ her come to live with us?”

“No.”

“Well, why in the land didn’t you say so before, Albe’t?”

“You didn’t ask me.  What do you want I should say to her now?”

“Say to who?”

“The gul.  She’s down in the pahlor, waitin’.”

“Well, of all the men!” cried Mrs. Lander.  But she seemed to find herself, upon reflection, less able to cope with Lander personally than with the situation generally.  “Will you send her up, Albe’t?” she asked, very patiently, as if he might be driven to further excesses, if not delicately handled.  As soon as he had gone out of the room she wished that she had told him to give her time to dress and have her room put in order, before he sent the child up; but she could only make the best of herself in bed with a cap and a breakfast jacket, arranged with the help of a handglass.  She had to get out of bed to put her other clothes away in the closet and she seized the chance to push the breakfast tray out of the door, and smooth up the bed, while she composed her features and her ideas to receive her visitor.  Both, from long habit rather than from any cause or reason, were of a querulous cast, and her ordinary tone was a snuffle expressive of deep-seated affliction.  She was at once plaintive and voluable, and in moments of excitement her need of freeing her mind was so great that she took herself into her own confidence, and found a more sympathetic